5

CHAPTER FOUR

Like Sleeping Beauty she lay in the middle of her bed, her shoulder-length blond hair tangled around her head and fanned out over the pillow she slept on.

The pillow beside her was empty but for the wide red silk ribbon tied in a perfectly neat little bow.

Learning how to tie that bow hadn’t been easy.

Just finding the girl hadn’t been, he had to admit. He’d only glimpsed her that night he and his boss had followed Logan to Boulder and kept tabs on his movements. Watching, waiting for him to choose a lover.

She had been just a one-night stand, sadly. This one would only warn the Callahans that the game was on once again and, this time, there were no rules.

Convincing his boss of this hadn’t been easy.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to convince his boss to allow him to handle this himself either.

The bastard liked the game, he decided. He liked experiencing his victims’ fear. He liked the tension and the arousal. He couldn’t figure out why his boss refused to participate in the abduction though. He hadn’t yet figured out why he held himself so aloof.

Pulling a Ziploc bag from his light jacket pocket, he pulled a drug-soaked cloth from it silently before bending and placing it over her mouth and nose.

Her eyes flared open.

He had to smile. She had pretty, pretty hazel eyes. Now he saw what had drawn one of the three men known for his love of exotic beauties.

It was her eyes that were a little odd, that drew attention and made her stand out in a crowd. Eyes that were a mix of amber and brown. They were slightly tilted and had a sexy cast.

Holding the cloth in place, forcing her to breathe in the potent drug, he could feel arousal beginning to burgeon in his jeans.

Well, in Callahan’s jeans. He wanted to chuckle, but he was too busy watching, waiting, then giving a little satisfied sigh as the little beauty went slack beneath his hands.

Excellent. Not a single mistake had been made thus far, just as he had promised.

He was well aware of his employer standing in the shadows behind him, watching, his gaze shuttered and as icy cold as always. He was frozen inside, his employee decided as he pulled the blankets back from Marietta’s body and gazed down at her nakedness with anticipation.

His fingers went to the zipper of his jeans.

“Not yet.” Harsh and unyielding, the sound of his boss’s voice had his jaw clenching in irritation. “Dress her. We have to stay on schedule.”

He nodded rather than speaking, and hid the sneer and anger that burned inside him.

Taking the clothing he had laid out when they had first invaded her bedroom, he took his time dressing her. She had to look as she always did when she went out late. Marietta Tyme took care with her appearance.

She wore her jeans carefully pressed, her shirts in colors that would emphasize the odd swirl of gold and brown in her eyes. It was really a shame that she had to die just because she had been with a Callahan.

But it was the course he’d been hired to take, and he had to admit, he did enjoy inflicting the pain, hearing them cry and beg for mercy. He loved it. But this timid little mouse hadn’t seemed his type. There was very little fight in her. And he’d have thought Logan would enjoy that spark of fire.

He couldn’t rape her here, but Corbin County wasn’t too far away. He could have her soon.

No mistakes, he reminded himself as he bent and pushed her sneakers onto her feet before carefully tying them.

The neighbor across the street stayed awake until dawn watching the late-night skin flicks to be found. The neighbor next to her had a surveillance camera that would only glimpse what he and his boss had planned for it to glimpse.

“Sleeping Beauty,” he whispered again. “Sleep just a little longer for us.”

He ran his palm up her leg to her thigh, then the warmth of her inner folds, shielded by her jeans.

He had made no mistakes, and he wouldn’t make any.

Replacing the drugged cloth in the Baggie, then sliding it back into his pocket, he lifted her to her feet and roused her enough to convince her to attempt a shuffling walk as he kept her tucked to his side.

Moving her to the front door, he glanced back before opening it, checking that the other man had already disappeared as planned.

The boss was gone, out the back door that had been unlocked just as he had known from an earlier visit that it would be.

He’d planned everything to the last detail.

Moving from the house to the large black 250 King Ranch crew cab pickup parked on the street in front of her home, he congratulated himself on a job very well done.

Unlike Thomas Jones twelve years before and Lowry Berry last month, he wouldn’t screw up.

He wouldn’t allow anyone to interfere in what he had been promised once the Callahan cousins were imprisoned or out of Corbin County.

He would have preferred dead, but his boss wasn’t willing to go that route. Yet.

He knew people, he thought as he helped Marietta from the porch to the sidewalk, then down the flight of cement steps to the passenger side of the truck. He knew people well, and he knew the thought of killing his enemies was constantly in his boss’ mind.

He hoped his boss let him help.

He wanted to help.

He would make certain it hurt them really bad.

Until then, he had Marietta. And before long, he would have another; he knew he would. He had the three picked out. The lovers Logan had taken, the whores who had been willing to settle for a one-night stand rather than holding out for a commitment.

Strapping the nearly unconscious woman into the passenger seat, he touched her cheek gently before closing the door and loping around the vehicle to the driver’s seat.

Ah yes, he was being watched.

Clete Olen was standing in his window across the street, obviously watching closely.

He ignored him.

Witnesses. There were several neighbors watching from their shadowed porches. After all, it was a nice summer night and this was one of the safer neighborhoods.

Pulling into the street, he chuckled at the thought of it.

The Neighborhood Watch hadn’t helped Marietta much. This was the last time they would see her, and they didn’t even know it.

He wondered if Logan Callahan even had a clue that the lovers he had tried so hard over the past six months to slip out with weren’t hidden after all.

He knew each one of them, where to find them, and exactly how to strike.

Now he just had to be patient.

Hours later

Her screams echoed through the dreamscape of a forested night, filled with agony and rage as they penetrated his senses. Logan could feel the terror as it tore through him, the knowledge of what he was hearing and whose screams it was.

It was a dream. The same dream. And he couldn’t escape it.

The knowledge that he would never be able to save her was replayed through his soul, nearly breaking it now as it had then.

Because he couldn’t save her.

No one could save her.

Jaymi.

His cousin’s lover.

His friend.

Logan could feel his feet pounding across the uneven terrain as he, Rafer, and Crowe fought to reach her, though a part of him knew they would never get there in time. Fate had already delivered the deadly stroke of destruction and now all that was left of it was the memories and the nightmares.

Blood raced through his veins, pounded through his heart, and adrenaline poured into his system as rage began to eat at his senses.

The sound of her agony penetrated the darkness. He could hear Rafer curse ahead of him, the sound of his voice broken, enraged. Logan couldn’t hear Crowe, but then he and Rafer never heard Crowe. Their cousin was as silent as the night itself, bearing down and promising death.

Twelve-year-old memories surged through Logan’s sleeping mind, bathing the night in a bloody hue. Time seemed to be locked in slow motion as blood spilled from the deep, gashing wound the monster had sliced into Jaymi’s side.

She wasn’t crying, though. Instead, she was looking over Rafer’s shoulder, whispering, “Tye’s come for me, Rafe. He’s here. Tye’s here.”

Her deceased husband.

In her pain and fear it was the man she had cherished above all others whom she had conjured up to take her from the reality she was suffering.

Rafer was screaming as he fought to hold the wound closed, to push her blood back inside her body, begging her to hold on.

Begging her not to leave him.

After all, who else would ever accept him as she had? Who else would look beyond the ravages of the cousins’ past and see more than three cursed young men?

As Logan crashed through the night after Crowe and the serial killer who had made Jaymi his sixth victim, he could feel the sorrow, the grief, and the horrifying knowledge of what this night could bring creeping through him.

Each of the six women who had been killed throughout the summer had been tied to the cousins. Each of them had either slept with one of them or was sleeping with one of them at the time of her death.

Logan had lost two past lovers, Crowe had lost three, and now Rafer had lost the woman who had helped him find a measure of peace in the past year.

As Logan reached Crowe, crouched in the dirt next to a mountain trail, his cousin’s hands and face stained with blood, he drew to a stop. Chest heaving for breath, failure thick in his senses, he watched the tears that welled in Crowe’s eyes as he lifted them to him.

“Damn. Damn. He got away.” Crowe’s breaths heaved as harshly as Logan’s now while his voice filled with pain. “Fuck him. Damn him, he got away.”

Logan stared at his cousin’s hands as he turned them up. They both stared at the blood before Crowe lifted his face to Logan, a tight, savage smile contorting his expression. “He’s carrying my fucking knife buried in his gut,” Crowe snarled. “He won’t live much longer.”

Jagged blade, sharp and deadly, Crowe’s knife was meant to kill, and he had ensured that it had served its purpose.

They were too young for this, was a hazy thought. Yet here they were, and there was no escaping.

“Jaymi’s dead.” Logan helped him to his feet as Crowe staggered, his gaze bleak as he leaned heavily against Logan for precious minutes.

Grief tore at Crowe’s voice as well. “Fuck. Logan, we’re all screwed tonight.”

They hadn’t been fast enough. They hadn’t saved Jaymi, and now they would be lucky if they could save themselves.

As they entered the clearing to see their youngest cousin, Rafer, rocking Jaymi in his arms, his tears falling into her hair, Logan knew that night could well end up being the last night of their freedom. If not of their lives.

Logan watched solemnly as Rafer leaned his head further against Jaymi’s and continued to rock her.

Tall, broad, Rafer dwarfed the much smaller woman. She looked far too petite, too delicate, in his arms. And much too still.

Too still because the cousins had failed to protect her.

Rafer had sworn to his best friend, Jaymi’s deceased husband, that if anything ever happened, then he would protect Jaymi with his own life. That he would watch out for her. That he would care for her.

Yet the cousins hadn’t been able to save her from a madman.

Logan stared at Rafer’s blood-soaked clothes and hands and turned his gaze to the flames of the fire that seemed to build. Laughter began to echo, and as Logan jumped to save Rafer from the knife that suddenly sank into his side he felt the cold bite of steel as it penetrated his own back.

* * *

Logan jerked awake with a suddenness he had become used to over the years.

As he lay there, though, his senses on high alert, a sound so out of place with the night as to cause him to stiffen penetrated the silence of the room.

Irritation strained his patience as he clenched his teeth against the need to curse. Son of a bitch, was sleep a frickin’ sin in this damned county?

For the fourth night in a row he’d awakened to the knowledge that something or someone was prowling the night outside his home.

Usually, it was the sound of the little squatter Saul Rafferty had dumped in his backyard. The one he still hadn’t been able to find yet another home for.

Tonight there was more, though. Something larger, something quieter, no, someone, moving with deliberate stealthiness.

Logan was a cranky bastard when someone messed with his sleep. He could feel his fingers tingling, the need for the fight he could sense brewing around him beginning to irritate his knuckles, to make them ache for the hard, powerful force that only came with a good fistfight.

It was a mood that had followed him since the night he’d forced himself to send his delectable little neighbor back to her empty bed.

Hell, since he’d returned to his own empty bed, only to find the couch more bearable.

Hell, it was more bearable, but he heard every fucking sound outside. He was too well trained not to.

Each night he awoke to the knowledge, not so much a sound, that someone was sneaking outside his house, that they were moving around it as though probing at Logan’s security.

Between his late-night awareness that someone was outside and the pup whining and scratching pitifully at the patio door, aware he was only feet away, Logan hadn’t managed much at all in the way of sleep.

Day or night.

Tilting his head to catch the sound again, he found himself hearing only the pup’s whines. Logan finally gave up all thoughts of lying there undisturbed to stare at the ceiling another night.

Hell, if that awareness of something invading his space hadn’t awakened him then his nightmare would have.

That was no good.

He was damned if he wanted to relive that night again.

Instead, he listened to the sound of the puppy whining as she scratched against the door again. A second later, it wasn’t so much a sound he heard. His senses were just so well-honed that the knowledge of the familiar sounds of the night to the side of his house weren’t there. The owl wasn’t whooing, crickets weren’t calling. Something or someone was disturbing them.

There was a sense of danger, a sense of intrusion. The trespasser hadn’t yet caused harm, but Logan could feel the intent that was there.

Fuck. The little scrap that refused to be owned by anyone else was too small, too delicate, for where she was currently camped, especially with the enemies the Callahans had. And now, with something or someone stalking the night, there would only be increased danger.

She was still far better off there, though. With the impression of being ignored, than with the certainty that there was something Logan Callahan cared about, it would only save the pup’s life in the long run. His reputation for having no friends, no lovers, no ties, was so well known that so far no one had suffered for having being associated with him.

The sound of the pup’s questioning little whimper had him staring at the ceiling in irritation.

Did people on this street forget the rumor that the Callahans were lazy, shiftless bastards? That they needed their damned sleep?

No doubt it had to be a neighbor looking to find a way to irritate him. To find a weakness. To add to the tension that everyone hoped would run him from his home and cause him to default on the trust.

Fuck. They could give him a break. His intruder could give a single night a break and the nightmares could surely evaporate for one night and allow him to enjoy the fantasies of the luscious little neighbor whose kiss still burned through his body.

Moving his hand silently from where it rested against his abdomen, he slid it to where he had tucked the handgun at his side earlier that night. Logan forced himself from the comfortable position he’d fought to find over the past hours, blowing out a silent breath as he did so.

He should shoot the trespasser just for irritating him. Or maybe just beat the shit out of him.

If he could catch him this time. So far, he’d just been shit out of luck. Whoever it was had been slick enough to run before Logan could get to him.

Holding the weapon securely, Logan sat up before sliding his feet, still shod in leather sneakers, to the smooth hardwood floor of the dining room.

His cousins Rafer and Crowe had laughed when Logan had begun sleeping on the old couch. He didn’t explain why, and he wasn’t about to. His eldest cousin, Crowe, was already concerned about the neighbor.

As though he knew Logan well enough to know exactly where his fantasies lay.

There were no fewer than four large bedrooms with attached bathrooms upstairs, all with large beds, Crowe had commented. When he had, his expression had stilled and a single memory seemed to haunt all three of them.

At one time, three Callahan couples had lived in this house, along with their children. Three boys, Crowe, Logan, and Rafer, and one infant daughter. The first daughter born to the Callahans since before they’d immigrated from Ireland.

They had come together for the sake of their children’s safety. For their own safety as they planned to set in motion their final vengeance against the three powerful men trying to destroy them.

There wasn’t always safety in numbers, though, and the innocent didn’t always persevere. The Callahan men and their wives had learned that one snowy, miserable night on a mountain road as they made their way back from Aspen. With them had been an infant daughter. Bright-eyed, dark-haired, and just beginning to smile. She too had been taken from life far too soon.

Placing his feet silently on the floor, Logan rose slowly from the couch. The memory of the infant’s baby sounds drifted through his mind as he held the weapon at his thigh and moved through the dining room, keeping close to the shadows.

Pushing back those long-ago memories, Logan concentrated on the lack of sound that processed along the side of the house. He was listed as a medic with the special forces, inducted from the marines, but he’d been far more than that. Just as his cousins had been.

Logan had been expecting problems since he’d returned to the house nearly six months earlier.

Another sound drifted into the house. The sound of tiny growls, immature and fierce. The sound had a silent snarl of fury curling at Logan’s lips.

The little squatter camped on Logan’s patio outside the living area was already fiercely territorial, even for her small size. The pup was an innocent bystander in the war beginning to heat up between the Callahans and the patriarchs of the three ruling families of the county. The Barons, as they were called. Logan’s, Crowe’s, and Rafer’s grandfathers had set out to destroy the sons of their only daughters the moment those daughters had died.

Logan could see that particular little ball of fluff being harmed just for the hell of it. He knew Saul Rafferty had brought it simply to torment him. He’d done it to give Logan something to care about so she could be taken in the cruelest way possible.

Just because she was small enough, innocent enough, and because enemies would assume it belonged to Logan.

If only someone could convince her to actually come to them or take a treat from them, then they could harm it. Thankfully, the little female pup refused to associate with anyone but Logan.

Hell, trying to get the little squatter to come out from the sheltering evergreens that bordered each side of the yard as well as the side of the house had proved difficult even for Logan’s neighbor each time he caught her attempting it. Hopefully, the little invader would stay out of the way while Logan took care of the intruder slipping through the night. Because every time Logan walked out to the yard, the first thing the pup did was try to sleep on his sneaker.

The pup was silent now, hidden in the evergreen and mass of plants bordering the side of the house. The knowledge of that assured Logan that the intruder was coming much closer.

Fuck. Logan didn’t need this. Not another death on his conscience. Not an innocent pup, an innocent woman or friend.

Please, God. How much more guilt was he supposed to carry?

A second later there was another fierce little growl and puppy yap.

As though someone was trying to entice the tiny invader from her hiding spot in the bushes next to the door.

For what reason? To make her pay perhaps for the perceived sins of the home’s owner?

He wasn’t even going to consider it. He sure as hell wasn’t going to allow it.

Hell no! If anyone was daring enough to even try to harm her, then Logan promised himself he was going to get the fight Logan been brewing since moving back into the house earlier in the year.

A tight, hard curve curled his lips. He hoped whoever was out there was brave, daring. Or just plain stupid enough to let Logan catch them, because he had years of pent-up fury that had brewed inside him.

Sneaking along the wall to the glass doors, silent, his senses open and alert. Logan watched the shadows outside the glass carefully.

Then, surprisingly, a shadow moved into view.

The moonless night didn’t help to identify who crouched at the side of the house, or their intent.

Their position, movements, and the darkness that filled the inner yard aided the intruder, and they were reaching for the pup.

Before they could slide beneath the sheltering evergreen, Logan jerked the door open before gripping the back of their neck and jerking them inside.

Who was more surprised, herself or the intruder, he wasn’t certain.

He couldn’t have expected it, and he sure as hell couldn’t explain the anger that rose inside him at the sight that met his eyes.

“What the hell are you doing?” he growled.

Shoving the weapon into the waistband of his jeans, he reached down, gripped the young woman trying to rise from the floor under her arms, and dragged her to her feet.

“Hey, bully!” Surprised and not the least bit happy, his trespassing little neighbor stumbled back before staring up at him with a glare on the pert features of her gamine little face. “What’s your problem, Logan?”

Rising to her full height wasn’t much of a stretch. At five feet, four inches, she wasn’t exactly the tallest woman around.

That short, delicate little body had fit him to a T when he had braced her against the side of a tree and kissed her senseless, though. Not that he’d had many of his senses left himself that night.

Standing on her bare feet, hands propped angrily on her hips, she confronted him with an expression of outrage.

Dressed in another of those filmy, lacy gowns, she looked like pure temptation. It wasn’t black; instead, it was the softest spring green he’d ever seen. The robe brushed the floor, shielding the filmy gown beneath that only just showed the shadowed hint of feminine flesh between her thighs, and pert nipples topping her breasts.

“Manhandling women went out in the Dark Ages, Callahan,” she informed him tartly when he didn’t respond.

He ignored her sidekick completely. It had expertly wiggled in just before he slammed the glass door closed.

Son of a bitch, this woman was more than just the reason for his hard-on. She was the star of every sexual fantasy that could spark in his too-sexual brain. The terrifying fact was, she was beginning to play in fantasies that, surprisingly enough, weren’t all sexual.

He couldn’t allow that.

“What’s my problem?” he snapped as hunger, emotion, and a need clenched his guts as his resentment, his fury against the circumstances he could chance, flooded his system. “It’s three in the morning and you nearly got your head blown off sneaking around to play on my patio like a nine-year-old. Why the fuck didn’t you just cross the yard rather than sneaking around?”

His door was right across from hers. What the fuck was her problem?

Folding his arms across his chest as he glared down at her, watching as the dog sat on her haunches and stared up at Logan as well, panting happily now. The squashed-in dark little face was creased in bliss, as though just the sight of him pleased the little scrap. And he couldn’t understand why.

He was the bastard trying to give the dog away, not a savior.

Skye snorted at his statement, her gaze as confrontational as her smart-assed mouth. “I’m a vampire. I prefer the night,” she replied drolly. “There now, you have your explanation. Can I go back to visiting with the only sociable member of your little family or do I have to deal with you too?”

He wanted to wipe his hand over his face in an attempt to convince himself he was still asleep, but there was no way in his wildest fantasies that he could conjure up such a farcical dream.

Especially the part where he swore he could glimpse her nipples through the lace and soft-as-silk chiffon covering them.

“I didn’t ask for infantile bullshit,” he said slowly, clearly, desperate to ignore the warmth now penetrating his sneaker as the pup crossed between them and flopped over his sneaker to sleep. “I asked what you were doing on my back porch irritating the hell out of me. I thought we agreed you were going to stay away from me?”

Her eyes widened before her gaze slid down his body, though not in appreciation of it, but rather to glance at the now drowsy little bag of fur on his feet as though the answer to his question were self-evident.

Son of a bitch. He hadn’t asked for this. He distinctly remembered not asking for these kinds of problems.

“The sociable part of your family,” she stated again. “I was visiting. I was not bothering you.”

“Then take it home,” he ground out between clenched teeth as the puppy shifted for a better position on his foot. “It’s not and never has been a part of my family.”

A slender brow arched mockingly. “I think she’s under the impression she’s already home.”

Logan didn’t stop to think or to consider his actions. The feel of the warm little body draped over his sneaker, her little heart pounding against the leather, brought back memories he rarely allowed himself to revisit. Reaching down, he gripped the scruff of the puppy’s neck as he opened the door and with the utmost gentleness deposited the puppy back onto the patio before closing the door in the scrap’s disappointed little face.

“Take it home with you,” he told Skye coldly. “It has no business here.”

And neither did she.

And his heart was breaking.

The pup’s cries threatened his determination and the look of disappointment and pity on Skye’s face threatened his control.